Marketing Pros: Stefanus Wong of Greenpeace

All September, we’re shining a light on some of the amazing work happening in the non-profit sector. With Climate Strike happening on September 20, social media has a critical role to play in drumming up support.

We chatted to Stefanus Wong from Greenpeace about his challenges and learnings in marketing the world’s biggest, and most visible charity.

Here's Stefanus!

Linktree: Stefanus, tell us about your role and how you came to be at Greenpeace!

Stefanus: “I have quite an eclectic background having worked in Yahoo Search Marketing and having managed the digital operations of several different lifestyle magazines including Luxury-Insider, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and Men’s Health. I applied for the role at Greenpeace because it’s been a personal goal of mine to dedicate some part of my professional achievements to the non-profit sector. It’s my way of giving back.

“My official job title is a Content Editor, but with a non-profit, it’s less systematic and the job title often doesn’t reflect the bulk of your responsibilities. I am, mostly, responsible for implementing and developing the Greenpeace International digital strategy. A huge chunk of that responsibility is cultivating a data-informed culture within the team.”

What does your wider team look like?

“The team is separated between 3 time-zones — Asia, Europe and the Americas — so we can operate 24/7. Everyone has different areas of expertise, from filming and video editing, to press and media relations, to digital and social, but we all need to be adaptable and responsive, so reasonably adept in almost every piece of the pie.”

What are your main goals with digital marketing?

“We have two main objectives – deepening our engagement with our supporters and providing a platform for minorities and indigenous people who are standing on the front line.”

Greenpeace is focused on helping minority and indigenous groups' causes get heard.

What’s been your favourite project to work on at Greenpeace?

“Developing an Instagram strategy has been quite fun. We managed to grow our followers 1400% within 3 years.”

There are so many urgent topics Greenpeace is involved with. How do you even begin to build out a marketing plan and prioritise narratives?

“Our main narrative is simple – stopping or lessening the impacts of climate change. From there, we have different key battlegrounds from ending the age of fossil fuels to urging people to adopt a plant-based diet, to reducing single-use plastics.”

One of the current focuses for Greenpeace is the Amazon forest fires, and educating its audiences on what's happening ecologically and politically. (Photo: Victor Moriyama / Greenpeace)

When something like the Amazon rainforest fire happens, what’s the process in getting content out to educate your audiences?

“We are deploying photographers and campaigners on the ground to document the forest fire and then spreading the messages in social media to criticise the Bolsonaro agenda of environmental destruction and human rights abuses.

“From the public perspective, we are urging our supporters and companies to reject any products (eg soy, beef) that have any connection to environmental destruction in the Amazon and across Brazil.”

As a global brand, split across time zones, languages and cultures, what does community management look like at Greenpeace?

“Most people in our teams are multi-lingual in key languages within the region which helps. We also have a network of country and regional offices that run their own channels in local languages. These offices are fully staffed by people who know the domestic context and their own communities better than any of us who manage the international channels ever could. We work really closely with these offices all the time. We also flag anything that requires monitoring to the team picking up from us when we handover.

“Currently, we are in the middle of revamping our chatbots to make our jobs slightly more manageable.”

What tools are you and the marketing team using to support your work?

“For social content management, we are using Hootsuite. For analytics, we are using Fan Page Karma, Google Analytics and Google Data Studio. For social listening and monitoring, we are using CrowdTangle and Talkwalker.”

When done well, memes are a great vehicle for delivering powerful messages to broad audiences.

Greenpeace isn’t afraid of using a meme to discuss serious topics! Is that something that’s worked well?

“If you want to talk to the younger generation, let’s not be afraid to reach them in the language they understand. I am a millennial so I fully understand the power of memes! It’s metamodernism – an ironic detachment with serious engagement. Most of the work comes later in community management.

“For our process, we have to do our due diligence in making sure that the meme passed through our Equity, Diversity & Inclusion standard and the images used are under the public domain.”

"I am a millennial so I fully understand the power of memes! It’s metamodernism – an ironic detachment with serious engagement." Stefanus Wong, Greenpeace

There is essentially no end to your mission. How do you celebrate the small wins along the way, both for the team and for your audience?

“We celebrate every milestone as much as possible, as that is a win for the planet. We also try to communicate those wins to our supporters who have given their time and money on this journey together. It is really important for us to let them know that their efforts bear fruit.”

Greenpeace shares the work of artists like Sydney Mills to highlight concerns in a visual way suited to standing out on social media.

You’re an SEM whizz – how do you leverage news stories for your Search campaigns?

“We do our regional and local news scanning every morning to identify rising topics to publish them internationally. We also perform keyword research to understand key topics that lead audiences to our websites so we could produce more content on those topics and partner up with digital-first media for link building. Understanding of how the search engine works and SEO needs to be embedded into every single person on the team.”

"Understanding of how the search engine works and SEO needs to be embedded into every single person on the team."

What’s something any business can learn from a NFP?

“Limited resources mean we’re tasked to think outside the box. It is tough, but organic growth is still possible.”

You were at the Content Marketing Summit in Singapore last week – what was your biggest takeaway?

“The future of audience segmentation is based on tribes and communities, not demographic. This could be done through investment on Groups. There’s also a need for us to go hyper-local in our campaign content tied with a single simple narrative.”

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We hope you found Stefanus’ insights as fascinating as we did. A huge thanks to Greenpeace, not just for the interview, but for all the incredible work the team does. Join the Climate Strike on September 20 and find out more about Greenpeace missions on its Linktree.

The Linktree team is really passionate about reforestation – most of us are based in Australia, home to some of the planet’s oldest trees, as well as the scene of devastating forest fires. Because of that, we’ve partnered with One Tree Planted and all through September we’re donating a tree for every new PRO signup. Find out more here.

To help amplify the reach of organizations like Greenpeace, Linktree PRO is free for non-profits and charities. Just let us know if you’re a non-profit using Linktree and you want PRO here.

Greenpeace Asia Pacific

Greenpeace uses Linktree so that each regional team can control the way its own audiences discover content specific to them. Rather than sending all followers to the same generic Greenpeace homepage, audiences easily navigate to links that match what their region has been talking about. In the Asia Pacific region that content includes a petition for protecting the Great Australian Bight or ways to locate a local environment minister. APAC Greenpeace uses thumbnail imagery to make each link distinctive and relate to its Instagram posts.

Greenpeace USA

This is one punchy Linktree! Greenpeace USA has updated its Linktree color palette to match the brand, something you can do in the Settings section of the admin dashboard, under ‘Background Color’. You can use your exact hex color code to ensure it’s totally in-line with brand. Using capitals, the USA social team has created a prominent way of identifying each link. And they’ve also implement the social icons at the bottom of their Linktree, to help audiences find them on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Greenpeace Luxembourg

The team over in Luxembourg are a stylish bunch – they’ve stripped back their Linktree to look really clean and functional but still on-brand. They’ve used the curved outline button shape for subtle nods at the Greenpeace brand. There is a controlled number of links on the page – it’s streamlined and not overwhelming for the visitor. And the social icons link to all of the important platforms, as well as to email.